Fierce fighting in the Somali capital subsided on Wednesday after dozens were killed in 72 hours of pitched battles between Islamic militiamen and gunmen loyal to a United States-backed warlord alliance.
With militia members observing a tentative truce called late on Tuesday, which the warlords have yet to formally endorse, a tense calm returned to Mogadishu’s streets, but nervous residents said they feared new violence.
At least 40 people were killed and nearly 200 wounded in clashes that began on Sunday after an alleged assassination attempt on an alliance commander in the city’s northern Sisi neighbourhood that became the epicentre of the battle.
Sisi had been rocked by heavy machine-gun, artillery, mortar and grenade fire for three days until the Islamic courts, which control the militia, declared a unilateral truce in response to appeals from elders for an end to the fighting.
Court chairperson Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said the ceasefire was a humanitarian gesture but the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) scoffed and claimed the militia had run out of ammunition.
Warlord Abdi Hassan Awale Qeybdid said alliance leaders would meet on Wednesday to evaluate the military situation and discuss the truce.
Meanwhile in Sisi, residents reported an easing in the clashes.
”There is some fighting going on in Sisi today [Wednesday] but not as intense as it was,” said Halima Mohamud, a mother of six who fled with her family to the neighbouring Karan district.
”The fighters and battlewagons are still there so it is difficult to go home,” she told Agence France-Presse. ”They are firing occasionally each other.”
At least 32 people were killed — many of them civilians caught in crossfire or in buildings hit by mortar shells — in Sisi, with more than 100 wounded, according to residents and gunmen on both sides of the conflict.
There were widely divergent accounts of the death toll and residents said an exact figure would likely never be known as some of those killed were buried immediately without notice and others might not be recovered from rubble.
From Sisi, the fighting had spread south on Tuesday when the alliance shelled the headquarters of the largest of Mogadishu’s 11 Islamic courts, which the warlords claim are harbouring extremists, including members of al-Qaeda.
Violence then erupted in the southern K4 neighbourhood when alliance gunmen attacked a checkpoint set up by a non-partisan militia, killing at least four people, witnesses said.
Another four people, who had been brought to Mogadishu’s main Kaysaney Hospital for treatment, died of their wounds on Tuesday, according to medical sources who said they still had 71 patients injured in the fighting.
The violence threatened to eclipse two eruptions in February and March when at least 85 people were killed when the two sides fought the bloodiest clashes in the capital since Somalia collapsed into anarchy 15 years ago.
Tension in Mogadishu has skyrocketed since, with the Islamic courts declaring a holy war against the ARPCT, which was created in February with US support.
The warlords behind the alliance have vowed to curb the growing influence of the Islamic courts that have gained backing by restoring a semblance of stability to areas in Mogadishu that they control by enforcing Sharia law.
The alliance also accuses the courts of harbouring terrorists and training foreign fighters on Somali soil, charges that Islamic leaders deny but which have been echoed by the US and other western nations.
Washington has declined to explicitly confirm its support for the alliance although US officials have told AFP the group is one of several it is working with to contain the threat of radical Islam in Somalia.
Last week, the State Department acknowledged that the US was working with ”responsible individuals” in Somalia to prevent ”terror taking root in the Horn of Africa”. — AFP
